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Forum:2018-10-15 (Monday)
Discussion for comic for . Enjoying this wiki? Help to update it. ---- Our girl is proving her sparky credentials right there. ;p --Kuopiofi (talk) 08:13, October 15, 2018 (UTC) Well, so I guessed wrong about what she discovered. ➤ This business about needing spinal fluid from a non-spark seems dubious to me. What she wants to measure is what Klaus did to Gil. So what she should need is a sample of Gil's spinal fluid pre-Klaus. But of course that wouldn't properly set up the situation in which Tarvek has to think of something to say to Agatha to "explain" why she can't use Higgs's spinal fluid as her calibration sample, without telling her he's a Jäger. ➤ :So what she should need is a sample of Gil's spinal fluid pre-Klaus. And, how, pray tell can she do that? She could take a sample from Smokes body. --Fred1740 (talk) 17:51, October 15, 2018 (UTC) ::Oh, that's easy! She can invent time-travel... :-) But no, I know she couldn't do that, I'm just confused how doing this other thing is going to help her differentiate what Klaus did from what's weird (sparky) about Gil to begin with. Bkharvey (talk) 02:52, October 16, 2018 (UTC) I'm kind of surprised that her speech balloons aren't Madness Place style. She's hard at work, inventing something, and she's being frustrated in her need for someone to sample. Bkharvey (talk) 11:29, October 15, 2018 (UTC) P.S. The idea that Klaus's installation in Gil could be done, or undone, by biochemical means strikes me as very unlikely. Brain chemistry is a blunt instrument; to achieve such a subtle effect, you'd want to rearrange the interconnection of individual neurons, I would think. If we think back to the installation of Lucrezia in Agatha, it was done with a big hair-dryer-looking dome over her head. I envision zillions of tiny needles in that dome, sending electrical signals to specific neurons, rearranging probably billions of connections. (And yes, Fred, I remember that this is just a comic.) Bkharvey (talk) 12:59, October 15, 2018 (UTC) : You mean, as opposed to swallowing bugs? {RAISES SPOCK EYEBROW HERE} Bosda Di'Chi (talk) 16:25, October 15, 2018 (UTC) :: If you want to know the truth, I've never been very happy about those wasps, but at least they're (slightly) intelligent, and could in principle send tiny actuators into the brain to find particular neurons and rewire them. Not like beakers full of chemicals. Bkharvey (talk) 02:52, October 16, 2018 (UTC) :In a story where "galvanic essence" is used to re-animated the dead, hand-held batteries hold Gigawatt charges for days, a kilometer long dirigible has multiple foundries on it, potions change normal men to monsters, you are bothered by this? At some point, you just have to suspend disbelief and go with the story. --Fred1740 (talk) 17:51, October 15, 2018 (UTC) : If you absolutely need an explanation, it has been explicitly noted in-comic that Sparks can warp the laws of physics. --Geoduck42 (talk) 18:57, October 15, 2018 (UTC) :: I've chosen to ignore "warp the laws," because if that's what sparks do, it's not science at all! At least in Xenocide Card presented a coherent-ish theory by which there could be a natural basis for the otherwise magical ability to create stuff from nothing. @Fred: Is there a fundamental limit to how long a battery can hold a charge? I thought that was just engineering. I mean, if you convert the energy into work, you have to lose some of it by the Second Law, but if it just sits there? IANAP. And, I'm happy to go with the story, I'm not like my friend who found something about accelerating at three times the speed of light on the second page of a Doc Smith book and just put it down and wouldn't read anything of his ever again. But it's better, for me at least, if the story presents a coherent world. For one thing, they want us to be surprised when something surprising happens in the story, but if they keep pulling out dei ex machinae, if Agatha can just invent a crystal ball that tells her whatever she needs to know (and yes, the Muses are uncomfortably close to that), then nothing can be surprising. Bkharvey (talk) 02:52, October 16, 2018 (UTC) ::: There is a fundamental limit on how much energy anything remotely describable as a battery can hold. Batteries use chemical energy and I'm no chemist, nor am I a physists, but basically explosives are pretty energy dense, think about how big an explosion you can get from a battery sized thing, compare to desctutive potenial of Sparky battery powered things. Also a Gigawatt is unit of power not energy. Girl Genius runs on the logic of 30's and 40's adventure serials, not real life science. It uses the logic of Victorian crackpot inventors, only it actually works. The visions of possible achiement in popular conciousness during the rise of scientific endevour when humanity understood very little and was filled with optimism about what's possible. 05:16, October 16, 2018 (UTC) ::::Mea Culpa for NOT using the precise terminology in a simple example. What should I have used? Ergs? Volts? Just trying to point out violations of our natural laws. My point: where is the power / energy / aether behind Gil's zappy stick and Agatha's Death Rays? The truth is - who cares? - it's a plot device. The energy behind these small, hand held devices is stored in them or generated somehow on demand. Both seem to throw lightning bolt sized (described as Gigawatt range) amounts of energy. Because the story requires it. ➤ ::::This discussion just reminds me of an exchange between Rodger Ebert and Conan O'Brian. Ebert was on Conan's show and discussing Shaquille O'Neil's Kazaam. The young boy who releases Shaq's genie asks for candy. Of course, Shaq provides modern, product placement candies. Ebert felt that a 5,000 year old genie would have provided something more like candied dates. Conan replied, 'So you didn't like the historical inaccuracy of the rapping genie movie' --Fred1740 (talk) 21:08, October 16, 2018 (UTC) ::::: Ergs. Or more likely Joules. (I noticed that unit error, too, and I didn't say anything about it because it wasn't important. So you owe me one. ☺) But what is important for this conversation is that Gil's original zappy stick didn't store energy at all. The energy storage was in those thingies he installed all over the castle periphery. (And, on the subject of scientific accuracy, Agatha correctly the components that store the energy as "condensers," an old name for capacitors. I'm not sure what she thinks Gil should have used instead—probably chemical energy storage, i.e., batteries.) Gil's stick v.2 and Agatha's death rays are probably made of Tesla coils, in which case a relatively small amount of stored energy would produce huge voltages. I am saying all this not because I think an error in the science would kill the story, but to make the point that there are a lot of non-errors, and they help, for me at least, in "thickening" the fabric of the GG world. Bkharvey (talk) 23:10, October 16, 2018 (UTC) ::::: P.S. I am from the generation in which there was a certain amount of disrespect between science fiction fans and fantasy fans, even though to the outside world it was all one genre. And the SF fans (of which I was one) complained that in fantasy there are no rules; the author can pull out a magic spell or whatever, any time it's convenient. By contrast, SF often made one or two assumptions about specific impossible technologies, often faster-than-light travel, but otherwise took pains to follow the actual rules of physics. So I think all the talk about "science" in GG sets me up to expect that it'll be SF, not fantasy. Bkharvey (talk) 23:57, October 16, 2018 (UTC) :::::: Girl Genius is described as "Gaslamp Fantasy" by the Foglios, seems pretty clear to me that it's not SF. That said, pulling a magic spell out of your ass is generally seen as bad writing in Fantasy, the reader should have some idea of what characters in the story can and cannot do no matter what kind of story it is. -- 04:50, October 17, 2018 (UTC) ::::::: Yeah, I know... but all that talk of Science is confusing. Not just that the word is used; for example, Klaus-in-Gil saying that Albia's powers are just technology, not magic, has a very different tone from Carson talking about warping the laws of physics. Bkharvey (talk) 05:00, October 17, 2018 (UTC) :::: That's an interesting point about Victorian optimism about technology. Gives me something to think about. Bkharvey (talk) 00:00, October 17, 2018 (UTC) Elsewhere in Girl Genius Fandom, the speculation is that Zeetha, a non-spark, will provide the sample. This could prove interesting as she is Gil's sister. --Fred1740 (talk) 21:54, October 15, 2018 (UTC) : Oh, nice! Bkharvey (talk) 02:52, October 16, 2018 (UTC) By the way, this page is definitely for adults, not in the usual sense of pornographic, but because you can't get the joke unless you know that a spinal tap is really painful. And so in panel 4 Agatha is accusing Tarvek of not wanting to volunteer for that unheroic reason. (And, from that point of view, you couldn't find a better candidate than Higgs, who is known to be extremely tolerant to pain. Too bad his spinal fluid wouldn't work in the experiment.) Bkharvey (talk) 04:31, October 16, 2018 (UTC) :God knows, I always found listening to Spinal Tap to be painful. {BA-DUMP-BA-DAT!} Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week, try the veal. Bosda Di'Chi (talk) 16:43, October 16, 2018 (UTC) Okay here it is minutes away from Wednesday, and I've finally noticed the typography of "Tar'vek'" in panel 4. Agatha is sounding like a child. Why isn't she sounding like a Madness Place spark? I can't recall when we've seen her in a snit like this (as opposed to a towering rage) before. Bkharvey (talk) 03:49, October 17, 2018 (UTC) To all of you debating whether biochemical means can reverse/eliminate Klaus-in-Gil: I submit you’re proceeding from a false assumption. She is using biochemical data sources (blood, and presumably spinal fluid samples in the next page or two) to, in her own words in panel #2, “calibrate[] the array”. The nature of the curative “array” need not be biochemical; I’d guess it is an electromechanical device... but we’ll find out soon enough. Scientician (talk) 17:32, October 17, 2018 (UTC)